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For a psychoanalyst, stoicism at first reading appears to be a perverse doctrine. Without coming close to the vulgar understanding of the goal of analysis as “self-expression,” or “letting it all hang out,” we do hold to respect for the emotions, at the same time that we try to learn why they may be displaced, submerged, distorted, concealed, exaggerated. For the classical Stoics, emotion is intrinsically inferior to reason, and the sage aims to be free of it.
In this unusual book, Nancy Sherman, University Professor of Philosophy and Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown, struggles (that is the word) to demonstrate the approaches of the stoic mentality to the military mind, and its departures from it. Her background is in academic philosophy, but the book has its origins also in her work at the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, where she was the initial holder of the Distinguished Chair in Ethics. Such formidable qualifications command our attention, especially when she reveals a respectable acquaintance with basic psychoanalytic ideas.
The classical Stoic school of philosophy, of Zeno, Chrysippus, and Epictetus in Greek thought, with Seneca and Marcus Aurelius the principal Roman sources, along with the statesman and orator Cicero, denied the intrinsic reality of the emotions. At most they are to be construed as indicators of cognitions: fear, say, may point to danger, and so be informative, but only virtuous reflection ought be determinative of consequent action. Virtues are the only real good, and we owe happiness to them alone. We are to make the best of all circumstances under the guidance of virtue.
The military character, as understood by the Stoics, stands in its identification with a role assigned to the individual soldier. He (or she, in modern times) has to adjust his personal character to that assignment. If the soldier doesn't yet possess the requisite virtue, he must give the appearance of it. Decorum and etiquette supersede individuality. Even